Products made from traditional ingredients are the standard of excellence for crumb-structured, sweetened, snack products whether they are home-baked or purchased from a bakery. Important features of these baked products are their fresh flavor and moist, chewy texture. Particularly popular baked products are snack products such as cupcakes, muffins, quick breads, cookies, layer cakes, and filled pies.
Conventional crumb-structured baked goods are made from shortening, flour, water, sugar (sucrose) and usually eggs. Each of these ingredients plays an important role in producing baked goods with their well-known flavor and texture characteristics. The ingredients must be combined in particular proportions in order to get the desired results. Minor amounts of other ingredients, such as flour enrichers, leavening, salt and various flavorings, may be added depending on the final form of snack product desired. Such baking techniques and ingredient choices are well known by one skilled in the art of baking.
The use of reduced calorie materials as bulking agents in place of one or more traditional or conventional ingredients is known. For example, polydextrose has been promoted to replace a portion of the sugar in various baked goods. The technical bulletin "Pfizer Polydextrose for the Market That's Shaping Up", pp. 1-14 (Pfizer, Inc., 1985), recites formulas for different cakes, rolls, cookies, and brownies in which polydextrose was used to replace a minor portion of the sucrose and/or fat in the formulation.